The audience laughed and clapped appreciatively as Diane Ferlatte paused and made a face. Then she continued in her rich voice, telling the story of John, a former slave-turned-sharecropper who attempts to trick his old master.
Ferlatte, a professional storyteller, captivated the audience all evening long on Monday night in the multi-purpose room of Cesar Chavez Elementary School in East Palo Alto. With humorous details and the help of a background guitarist, she told stories and sang for nearly two hours.
Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) and Cesar Chavez Elementary sponsored the evening. Several other East Palo Alto community groups were represented as well for the discussion on “Race and Equity Identity Safety.” New school board members Dana Tom and Barb Mitchell were also present. Ferlatte, as the centerpiece of the evening, was introduced by event organizer Becki Cohn-Vargas and PAUSD superintendent Mary Francis Callan.
“We must have these tough discussions on race and equity identity safety,” Cohn-Vargas said. “We must achieve support for closing the achievement gap. We use ‘identity safety’ to mean creating a place for diverse students to feel safe.”
“This is a symbol of what we hope to accomplish," Callan said. "Not just tonight, but every day.”
When Ferlatte took the stage, or rather the small area in front of the arching rows of chairs, she began by getting the audience members to participate in a song by instructing them to say certain phrases with accompanying movements, such as “yes ma’am” with a nodding of a raised fist, or “milked the cow” with an exaggerating shaking of the upper body. By the end, even the most apprehensive members of the crowd enthusiastically participated, in part because of Ferlatte’s open admonishments.
After the rousing warm-up, Ferlatte began to talk about the significance of stories to her, and the importance of oral tradition in facilitating race relations.
“There are walls put up between cultures,” Ferlatte said. “But when you know someone’s story, you understand them, and it’s hard to hate them.”
In her rhythmic, melodious voice, Ferlatte told enlightening and entertaining stories from her life and the lives of others, including a story from the childhood of Martin Luther King, Jr. She also told slave stories and sang songs from that historical period.
“A lot of the walls that have been put up go back to slavery,” Ferlatte said.
Then, after telling stories, Ferlatte turned the tables on the audience and made each person find a partner, “who is different from you,” she said. She instructed each person to tell the other about themselves and stories from their own family’s history.
Ferlatte, whose extensive credits include performing at the Kennedy Center, ended with the evening with an expression of hope for race relations in America, and an apology that she did not have the time to tell more stories.